The Australian Medical Association and the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons say the rising number of elective surgeries was unsustainable, with an urgent plan needed to restore access for patients.

RACS president Dr Sally Langley said elective surgery was not an optional procedure that a patient elected to have.

"It is essential surgery, '' she said. "It is surgery to address often life-threatening conditions and conditions that prevent patients from living a normal life because of severe pain or dysfunction."

As a national issue, Tasmanians have also been impacted by long waitlists for elective surgeries with a recent report from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare finding wait times had blown out across the board.

The report found Tasmanians were about three times as likely to wait over a year for public elective surgeries compared with patients on the mainland.

It also found that 10 per cent of Tasmanians on the elective surgery waiting list waited at least 588 days during 2020-21, 240 days greater than the national average in the same category.

AMA spokesperson Dr Jerome Muir Wilson said referring to the surgeries as an elective downplayed the severity of significant conditions.

"Politicians or bureaucrats call it elective surgery, but if you've got someone waiting for a knee replacement and they can't work then we see it as essential surgery," he said.

"People think elective surgery is more like cosmetic stuff, but we see it as essential health that impacts on day to day lives."

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He said delaying some surgeries could have long-term impacts on patients and place a further strain on health services.

"I saw a child before Christmas who had two hearing tests because he had blocked hearing and he needed grommets which is a simple day procedure," he said.

"On that waitlist, the outpatient wait time is a couple of years, so his speech isn't developing and he's going to need speech therapy to catch up with his learning needs.

"It's a really hard thing to see when it takes something so simple to fix it, but they just haven't got the capacity to do it."

Health Minister Jeremy Rockliff said Tasmania's waiting lists were too high but were improving.

"There is a lot more that we can do and need to do," he said.

"With our four-year elective surgery plan, with 30,000 elective surgeries all funded and that plan developed by clinicians - a clinician-led patient-focused plan - we're hoping to further improve and are expecting further improvements over the course of the next months and years."

AMA president Dr Omar Khorshid said a funded plan from state/territory and federal governments to clear the backlogs and support public hospitals was needed.

"It needs to be backed by real, long-term funding commitments that deliver permanent, expanded capacity in our public hospital system," he said.

Mr Rockliff said with an ageing population demand on hospitals was increasing and with it a rise in the need for surgery.

He said funding would always be an issue that required the government's focus.

"We have a population with a number of health factors that are concerning," he said. "We need that investment moving forward and an investment in resources in terms of staff, and indeed a particular focus on elective surgery."